


the ending is the same (every time)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s01e08 The Well, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, one shot with additions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:04:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4691360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Convergence, Jemma is sent to London to study the debris - and so is her ex-husband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jemma knew she was working later than most of her fellow researchers, but when she sets aside her most recent bit of alien refuse, she’s surprised to find hers is the only table still lit. The library is dark around her, with the sheets put up in place of the shattered windows reflecting the light back at her in an ethereal sort of way. She sighs and sets to stretching out her stiff muscles. Aside from a very restless and abbreviated sleep last night, she hasn’t stopped working since yesterday, when she ducked into the sorting room and found the team she’d intended on visiting gone.

It’s not hard to come up with a reason for _why_ she’s thrown herself so fully into her work, and she’s rather disappointed in herself. She likes the team - Fitz has always been a dear friend of course and Skye’s a sweetheart and it was nice getting to meet O’Toole again when he wasn’t at death’s door - but it’s not them she’s trying to put from her mind.

Almost in answer to her loneliness, her phone goes off and she answers it without bothering with the caller ID. “Hello?”

“Jemma!” It’s Fitz, sounding downright frantic.

Her heart clenches. There can be only one reason Fitz would call her sounding like that. “Is he alive?” she demands, but it’s covered by Fitz’s own question.

“Are you okay?”

“ _Me?_ ” Jemma asks. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m still at the landing site.” Precisely where he and all the rest of them left her.

“Well…” Fitz trails off and Jemma can hear him having a whispered argument with Skye and O’Toole.

“Fitz!” she yells.

“Right! Okay! So, here’s the thing: our mission is only just finished and not at all cleared for mass consumption yet-”

“Yes, yes, SHIELD has its secrets. Now what about Grant?”

Fitz speaks so quickly she wouldn’t be able to understand him at all if she didn’t have so much experience with him. “He may or may not have been exposed to an alien artifact that put him in a perpetual state of rage.”

She allows herself a moment to absorb this. “And you’re risking court marshal by telling me because…?”

There’s a brief pause and she imagines the three of them are exchanging looks. “He’s gone slightly … missing. We’re not sure where he’d go but since his parents are across the Atlantic-”

“Right,” Jemma says tightly. “The woman who divorced him seems a fair option for exercising unexpected feelings of anger. Well, he’s not here, but I am thoroughly protected by SHIELD agents. I’ll be sure to let them know of the potential trouble.”

“Right,” Fitz says, sounding slightly put off by her lack of reaction. “Well, if you see him-”

“I’ll call you straight away. Thanks for the warning.”

“Stay safe-”

Jemma hangs up before he can say more. She should, she knows, call the guards protecting the perimeter from thieves and looky-loos straight away, but she needs a moment to collect herself.

There’s fear, naturally. Grant is an incredibly dangerous man even in his right mind and if he’s holding onto feelings of resentment two years after their divorce, it could end very badly for her. But that’s a small thing compared to the disappointment she feels. Yesterday was the second time in as many months that she’s seen Grant. The last time she saw him prior to O’Toole’s near death was nearly a year ago. They rode the same elevator at the Cube and it was the most uncomfortable fifty-four seconds of her life. She doesn’t at all blame their fellow passengers for their sighs of relief when Grant disembarked. But these last two times ... there was a civility between them that Jemma had thought lost forever.

She may not have allowed herself to think it, but a part of her - the same part that still jumps whenever his name is mentioned in conjunction with a dangerous mission and still feels her left hand is too light more than a year after the tan line faded - hoped this might be a new beginning. Leading only to friendship and lasting civility, of course.

No matter her own feelings on the subject, the ever-practical side of her brain knows there’s no potential for more than that, not after the way she hurt him. As she reaches for the phone, she lets out a breath that might be a laugh under other circumstances. She certainly _deserves_ his rage; it’s no wonder Fitz thought to warn her.

A warmth presses against her back and the phone is plucked from her fingers before she can find the contact number for the nightshift guards.

“Grant,” she breathes and turns on the spot. She barely manages to do that before he’s crowding her further, forcing her hips up against the table with his own in a manner that ensures she won’t be moving without his permission.

He’s still holding her phone and stares at its face with a deceptively calm expression.

“Grant,” she says again, more levelly this time, “I need you to listen to me. You’re not in control of yourself right now-”

“Boyfriend?” he asks, disarming her completely.

“What?”

“It’s late,” he says, and tosses the phone over his shoulder. It would be an idle motion if the force wasn’t enough to have it shattering against the far wall. Fitz didn’t mention added strength; if she survives this, she will be giving him a rather severe talking to on that score. The thought is jarred right out of her by Grant’s fingers wrapping around her wrist and plucking her bracing hand from the edge of the table. “Who would you be calling so late except a worried boyfriend?”

He still sounds perfectly at ease, but there’s a steel beneath his touch that tells her it’s a put-on. Alone it would be disconcerting, but with the way his eyes haven’t once settled on her face - instead trailing over her hair, her body, her arms - it’s slightly frightening.

“The guards,” she says, and for once is glad for her inability to lie. Grant will have no reason to doubt her word. “Fitz called.” A muscle in Grant’s jaw twitches and the nearly soothing brush of his hand at her wrist takes a turn for painful. “Your team is worried about you.”

He chuckles darkly. “And they called _you_?”

“Yes.” She stops just short of telling him they were also worried about _her_ , figuring she’d best not give him any ideas. “They knew I’d want to know if anything happened to you.”

His eyes snap to hers. The calm is gone, replaced but white-hot fury. “You?” he demands. “You _left_ me.”

His hips buck against hers and she gasps, her back arching in a futile attempt to find more space. His free hand catches her cheek and his thumb pulls her lip lower, slipping slightly inside her mouth.

“You left me,” he says again, “and I _let_ you.”

A small sound escapes her. Not of distress, but of surprise at the confession.

He extracts his thumb and nudges her jaw shut with a smile. “Yeah. I had to be the fucking good guy, let you walk away without a fight.” His hands slide into her hair and her head tips back into the touch on instinct. His forehead lowers to hers. “If I had to do it all over again," he whispers, "I’d have torn SHIELD to the _ground_ before I let you leave me.”

She has no idea what SHIELD has to do with anything - even if they’d both gone into the private sector, it wouldn’t have changed much - but has no opportunity to ask. He kisses her, hard and punishing. His kisses always used to be especially forceful when he returned from a mission and she thinks this might be his way of making up for two years of missed opportunities. He pours all that longing into her and she soaks it up like a sponge. This time her back arches in an effort to bring her closer to him and one of his arms snakes obligingly behind her back.

“Tell me to stop,” he says. Even with the scant distance he puts between them, she can barely hear him over her own panting. “Tell me you don’t want me anymore, you don’t want _this_.”

What, she wonders in a mental voice that sounds frightfully like a whine, happened to not wanting to let her go? But she recognizes this is his attempt at being honorable. He’s swept in here in a threatening fashion and forced himself upon her. He’s wrestled back just enough control of himself to give her an out. She should take it. He’s not himself and carrying on would certainly be akin to taking advantage.

Only there’s the arm wrapped around her to consider, the fingers twisting distractingly in her hair, the rhythm of his chest against hers, so familiar it makes her want to cry.

She wants more. She wants _them_ again, no matter what practicality might tell her. And while she knows she’ll never get it, she is apparently a horrible enough person to take what she can have of him now.

“No,” she says. She mirrors his position, wrapping a hand around his waist and using the other to scratch at the short hairs at the back of his neck in that way she knows he enjoys. “No, I can’t do it again. I’m sorry.”

There’s something like joy, like triumph, in his eyes in the moment before he’s kissing her again, but any thought she might have on that flies away as swiftly as their clothes. In short order, the edge of the table is digging into her upper thighs, sure to leave bruises for weeks with the force with which he’s pounding into her. He’s almost brutal, savage, but tempers whatever primitive characteristics this artifact has imposed upon him with loving touches. In one moment, he’ll be leaving dark marks on her skin and in the next, holding her like she’s the most valuable thing he’s ever beheld.

Later, when Jemma learns the nature of the artifact, that it is a weapon meant to imbue greater strength to its wielder, she will think it fitting that it also gifts Grant with truly impressive stamina. Primitive depictions of ancient warriors often included an almost dangerously erect member (certainly if they’d be entering battle in such a state), and Grant is having no trouble holding his own, even after bringing her to orgasm twice.

“ _Grant_ ,” she whines. She’s growing decidedly sore now, but she’s so _close_ , just on the edge of her third.

“I know.” He slows and she presses a pitiful cry into his shoulder. His torso jumps with silent laughter and his fingers play along her sweat-soaked back.

“I didn’t say _stop_.”

“Is there?”

She pulls her head from the curve of his neck to frown at him. Did she actually pass out or did she miss something?

He smiles and there’s a cruelty to his humor she’s never seen before. “Is there a boyfriend?”

She relaxes, her muscles moving around him in a way that has his pupils widening. “No,” she says, trailing her fingers over his chest. “No one else.” There have been offers and single nights out, but none of them had that indefinable quality that attracted her to Grant and, she’s found, she can’t get up any excitement about men who don’t possess it. Whatever _it_ is.

She shifts her hips against his, though it makes the bite of the table into her backside that much more painful. His fingers twist in her hair again and drag her to him for a kiss. He thrusts and a wave of pleasure rolls out from her core.

Maybe later she’ll be sorry she told him so much. Likely she’ll be sorry she did any of this at all - they both will. But right now, with the table cool against her back and Grant smiling that wolfish grin down on her while his fingers ease her tense muscles, the only thing she regrets is leaving him in the first place.

 


	2. Grant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> azariastromsis prompted a POV switch so I wrote this quick snippet that technically takes place prior to the previous drabble

Skye asks if the staff showed him his brother, pulled up memories of Christian’s torment from the locked box he hides them in and pasted them on the inside of his eyelids so he can’t escape them. He lets her believe that’s true. Lets Coulson believe it too, when they talk. And it is - mostly.

Thomas drowning in that well, his voice small and desperate and cutting off too soon every time because water’s rushing into his mouth, is definitely the star of Grant’s berserker staff-induced bad memories, but it’s not all he sees.

Maybe it would be if two weeks earlier O’Toole hadn’t been infected with some alien virus, if SHIELD hadn’t grounded them and called in their leading mind on alien biochemistry to help out. Grant spent hours watching Jemma work in the portable hospital SHIELD set up outside town. He got to see her hair pull free of its tie as the hours dragged on, watch her delicate hands work with practiced ease, even hear the warmth in her voice when she spoke to Fitz and the rest of the team.

He got to watch her smile turn brittle and plastic when it fell on him, watch the light fade from her eyes.

She _fucking left him_.

It’s not her he sees when he’s fighting Nystrom’s men, not exactly. Mostly it’s the well, flashes of it amid the battle, but there’s this idea hovering somewhere in his mind. Jemma’s somewhere out in the world, alone, unprotected. She doesn’t even have his name to keep her safe anymore.

There are people like Nystrom in the world. Madmen who are killing and rioting for the sick fun of it, who _enjoy_ causing pain in a way not even Grant does.

Later, he’ll realize how silly it is to think that Jemma’s in danger from Nystrom, to attack him with all the fervor he would if the man had laid hands on her. That realization doesn’t come until he’s on the road back to London though.

All the mental reassurances that SHIELD considers her a valuable asset aren’t enough to sooth his worries. He has to _know_ she’s alive and well, and the only way to do that is to know on a sensory level that she’s still there. He has to _see_ her.

That’s all. Just a quick drive, a quick peek, and he’ll turn back around, meet up with the others in the morning. He’ll never even be missed.

But even as he drives and tells himself over and over that it’s only a little while longer, a little farther until he knows for certain, he knows that won’t be enough. He won’t be content with the civility she showed him after she saved O’Toole or the bland pleasantries they exchanged when crossing paths amid the wreckage in London. He doesn’t want that woman. He wants to see his _wife_.


End file.
